Yes, hold rogue cops liable but hold others like these Kansas City officers in esteem
We hear a lot today about cops acting badly, as we should. Not so much when they act heroically, which they do — and on a fairly regular basis.
Law enforcement officers really do run in when the rest of us are running out. As panicked people fled a Country Club Plaza hotel lobby after a fatal shooting on an elevator the morning of June 29, police rushed to the scene — quickly arresting the murder suspect in front of another hotel.
That same night — after a heartbreaking ceremony in May honoring the Kansas City Police Department’s 119 officers killed in the line of duty through the years — the department celebrated more than 50 of its officers for doing no less than saving the lives of some 13 people going back to 2019.
One of those saved, a grateful young Isaac Mayo, was at the ceremony with his new best friend forever, officer Malcolm Whitelaw. The officer had been driving by March 12, 2020 when he noticed Mayo, then 14, bent over in distress on the sidewalk. Whitelaw quickly surmised the boy was choking and, performing the Heimlich maneuver, dislodged a piece of carrot from the boy’s throat.
Mayo had been enjoying a healthy snack, interestingly enough, while walking home from the Police Athletic League Center.
In truth, though, each officer’s story should, itself, be an episode on some reality TV show. Officer Nathan Harper might warrant star billing, after saving two lives inside of April 2020 alone. The first, on April 8, was a 15-month-old found lifeless in an overflowing tub after some 10 minutes under water. He no doubt called on his experience as a medical specialist in the U.S. Navy to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions, then helped arriving paramedics ventilate the baby.
That military experience came in handy again on April 27, when Harper was dispatched to find a man in a shower with a slit wrist. Armed with a tourniquet and gauze, he stabilized the man for arriving medics.
This would indeed be one crowded reality show. Sergeant Chris Toigo, the first to arrive at a March 7, 2020 shooting, found a bullet wound to a 16-year-old victim’s underarm. Officers Cory Anderson, Devin Hales and Dylan Jehnzen and then-officer Kelsey Wingate kept the victim talking, and the crowd at bay, as they quickly found two other wounds, in the victim’s leg and back. It was a miracle he survived, as well as a marvel of police work at its best.
Overdoses, heart attacks, shootings, stabbings — they do it all, often in the course of a day. In one 24-hour period June 26 to 27, in which it received a dizzying 244 “Priority 1” calls, the department responded to six shootings, six stabbings, a rape, a strong-armed robbery, 75 reports of possible weapons fired, 12 reports of actual shots fired — and all while rendering aid with firefighters a whopping 72 times.
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Police officer changed the life of arrested woman
Hero officers leave an unseen, uncelebrated trail of grateful lives in their wake. A year ago, a man contacted the Kansas City Police Department through its Facebook page to find the officer who had saved his life weeks before. It turned out to be officer Audrey Crosby, who had responded to a June 30, 2020 stabbing at a gas station. She stanched the profuse bleeding from a wound that reached his lung, all the while reassuring him calmly he’d be all right.
Not without her, it turns out. Records showed the man had lost 75% of his blood before arriving at the hospital.
Even some who are arrested end up being grateful: Wichita Police this past week heard from one arrestee who flatly says, “He changed my life. He was the first step toward getting myself together. I had lost my son and been running the alleys for years. I didn’t even want to change, but he made me feel seen. I didn’t know that I wanted to be seen.”
Her arrest several years ago, she explained, “started a journey toward sobriety and success that I could never thank that man enough for.”
Police work is rarely easy, but never harder than when an officer has to make life-and-death decisions in split seconds: On June 25 an estranged boyfriend was using a sledgehammer to bust through a Kansas City, Kansas woman’s home — and shots had been fired in both directions as she and a friend tried to ward off the man. When police arrived, the woman says officers repeatedly pleaded with the estranged boyfriend, 60-year-old Dennis Delgado, to drop the gun, to not point it at them. He refused and they shot, killing him.
It’s under investigation, of course, as with all such tragic incidents. And I don’t know if they were heroes or not. But it’s undeniably possible that officers saved two innocent lives that day. “They gave him fair warning. I will say that,” the woman says. “I mean, like, I honestly believe that if he made it inside, I would not be here today.”
Definitely, rogue cops who hurt and kill wrongfully must be held accountable.
Most of the rest should just be held in high esteem.
